Open AccessDelivering output and struggling for change: Tacit activism among professional transitional justice work in Sierra Leone and Kenya
Author(s) -
Anne Menzel
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
cooperation and conflict
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.224
H-Index - 40
eISSN - 1460-3691
pISSN - 0010-8367
DOI - 10.1177/00108367211000800
Subject(s) - sierra leone , professionalization , scholarship , peacebuilding , transitional justice , political science , context (archaeology) , tacit knowledge , sociology , politics , meaning (existential) , aside , public relations , public administration , law , psychology , paleontology , art , philosophy , ethnology , literature , epistemology , psychotherapist , biology
The professionalization of transitional justice (TJ) has received extensive academic attention in TJ and related international relations and peacebuilding scholarship. This article adds an element that has received hardly any attention: namely the presence of activism even among professional and usually donor-funded TJ work. I argue that noticing activism in professional contexts requires attention to the ‘everyday’, meaning to life in between, aside and beyond high politics and officially important actors, actions, processes and events. Based on field research in Sierra Leone and Kenya, I describe and discuss everyday examples of a specific form of activism, namely tacit activism that I encountered with three key interlocutors, one Sierra Leonean and two Kenyan nationals involved in professional donor-funded TJ work. Their activism was ’tacit’ in the sense that it was not part of their official project activities and my interlocutors did not advertise their extra plans and efforts to (prospective) donors. And yet, it was precisely through these tacit plans and efforts that they hoped to meet at least some of the expectations that had been raised in the context of professional TJ projects.